2014 Ursa Major Award winners announced at Morphicon 2015

The 2014 Ursa Major Awards, for the Best Anthropomorphic Literature and Art of the calendar year in eleven categories, were announced and presented at an awards ceremony at the Morphicon 2015 convention, in Columbus, Ohio on Friday, May 1 from 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. EST.

The Ursa Major Awards are a popular-vote award. 2,851 ballots were cast in eleven categories between March 15 and April 15, 2015. Not everyone voted in all categories, although there were fewer single-category votes than usual. All voters were required to state what country they were voting from, and about 90 countries were named. Some, such as Care-A-Lot, were obviously fictitious, but those that appeared to be genuine by e-mail domain names included Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Russia, Sweden, Taiwan (Republic of China), Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. The most votes came from the United States, followed by Taiwan (the Republic of China).

Best Anthropomorphic Magazine

Edited collections of creative and/or informational works by various people, professional or amateur, published in print or online in written, pictorial or audio-visual form.In-Fur-Nation
Edited by Rod O’Riley (Internet magazine; January 1 to December 31)
Runners-up:

Comments

-My movie of the year takes the award; I think that's in the Bible as a sign of the apocalypse, so we have that to look forward to, then.
-MLP:FiM takes its first loss.
-Ironically, MLP:FiM also takes its first win, making IDW's comic book series the first since 2007 to not be fandom created to win, and the first since 2008 to be an offline, physical comic book to win its category.
-Flayrah seems to have an off year every other year. Oh, well, I voted for Rod, too (and even did some campaigning for him).
-I feel like Five Night's at Freddy's probably suffered from competing, in essence, against itself; it's hard to tell for sure from the voting if it would have mattered, but those games have gotten an surprising amount of fanart fairly quickly, and I there was nothing particular about this last pair of Pokémon games that stand out from any of the others.
-On the other hand, Mary E. Lowd doesn't seem to have suffered much from competing against herself.

And not to jump ahead, but it's probably going to happen next year too seeing as FNAF 3 released on March 2nd and FNAF 4 seems slated for a fall release.

Though I'm not going to be complaining too much right now because, well, Armello so far I think would be the one to beat in 2015. However, I'd hope it would win as it'd be the first time a board game won the Best Game catagory (Remember when there were board games in there competing with video games?). Oh sure it's a video game, but it's probably the closest a board game would get to winning the category.

As far as Furry Force beating MLP, I have to say I'm sort of shocked. Though I know some site owners with particular influence were pushing for it, I was skeptical that they would actually pull ahead of the Ponies. Particularly after their strong 4th season, which I think was one of the better in the series.

The even funnier part is, the creators of Furry Force are probably going to take more notice of it than the MLP animation staff... or maybe even the bronies (who are not furries). Since humor is what they do, I think the best way to take this award would be humbly, gracefully, and most importantly with at the very end of the humble acceptance end it with three simple words "Suck it, Bronies".

As far as Furry Force beating MLP, I have to say I'm sort of shocked. Though I know some site owners with particular influence were pushing for it, I was skeptical that they would actually pull ahead of the Ponies. Particularly after their strong 4th season, which I think was one of the better in the series.

The even funnier part is, the creators of Furry Force are probably going to take more notice of it than the MLP animation staff... or maybe even the bronies (who are not furries). Since humor is what they do, I think the best way to take this award would be humbly, gracefully, and most importantly with at the very end of the humble acceptance end it with three simple words "Suck it, Bronies".

Haha... it was cool to see CollegeHumor put out their own promotion urging votes for this award. SySable commented that a lot of new voting came in when I gather it typically gets only a small few thousands of votes. One mention connected to a 3,000,000 viewed video must really tip that. MLP is obviously a huge level above, but they didn't put out any such notice.

It's kind of amazing, because it's semi-mainstream "fursploitation" (closer to CSI or reality shows than fan created) that specifically notices this subculture- but they actually put care into a relationship with us. Is it a first?

Animation creation is so time consuming that fans don't put out a lot that could compete - the only fan product for that award was audio-only.

As a comedy website, you know they will probably play this up afterwards, in some ways it's like getting a Razzy award. I will ask them how they feel about it. It's good for the Ursas to be valued!

The creators of "The Furry Force" have been very enthusiastic in e-mails that they won, and want to know how they can get their trophy since they weren't at the Morphicon to get it in person. I don't recall that the creators of "My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic" ever gave any sign of caring about their win.

I agree that furry resembles a group of city-states; however, I don't see diversity as a negative, in awards, websites, or creators. Whether said awards matter is debatable for both furry and sci-fi. I'm sure plenty of people who consider themselves "sci-fi fans" could not name a single Nebula award-winner – even if they'd read the work concerned.

As far as relevancy is concerned, of the eight movies nominated for Best Picture by the Academy Awards for 2014, only one (American Sniper) played at my nearest theater. Now, obviously, a bit geographically challenged, as my recent comments on comic book shops illustrate, and last year was a really extreme example, but relevancy has nothing to do with awards.

Unless there's an award for "Most Relevant," but that would be stupid.

Sounds like his argument is that the creator of the work has to be a furry. In that case MLP, Pokemon, Five Nights at Freddy's also have to go.

If his argument is that the work should contain furries, then his anger about Furry Force doesn't stand. Sure his stance on Avatar is valid. He doesn't even mention the Vampire DLC of Skyrim beating Dust: An Elysian Tail...

Are there flaws to the URSAs? Yes. Is Furry Force one of them? No.

If anything, I think it shows that we as a fandom can laugh at exaggerated portrayals of the culture; as long as those portrayals are not done with malicious intent.

Because the difference between good and evil is merely the ability to laugh at one's self.

As I read it, the crux of his argument was that the UMA shouldn't support work which makes furry look bad; and that their promotion was inappropriate (comparedtohis) because their goal must have been to make the UMAs/furry look bad. Also, that they'd keep winning because they were popular; and I think he was hinting that a significant amount of the votes were not from furries and therefore should not be considered eligible.

He did try to draw a distinction between internal criticism by, say, Shawn Keller - I didn't think that was particularly convincing because, if anything, Shawn's work was more controversial at the time. In addition, it was suggested that votes had come in for many other categories, not just the one containing Furry Force.

You know what, honestly, as a guy who has criticized the UMAs in the past, and started up a monthly column that I even implemented effectively a whole year (a whole year, you guys!) and, bit less effectively another ... two, I think it was? ... to try and semi-sorta game the system. Anyway, he would have valid points, (maybe), but, as the guy who lost, he is in the worst possible position to make them.

I'm just very much reminded of California Chrome, the horse that most recently almost won the Triple Crown (or more specifically, his owner). Watching the Belmont Stakes, the program showed the owner presenting himself as a kind of good ol' boy just pleased to be there. Then the horse lost the race, and the guy instantly dropped the act and started a rant about how it was impossible to win the Triple Crown. The illusion instantly dropped; he had a valid point in that it is impossible (though that's also probably missing the point, so if anything bear guy at least has better ground to stand on), but, sorry guy. You're just being a sore loser. Try harder next year.

Or even Michael Keaton at the Oscars this year; he recently joked on Letterman how he lost the Oscar for Best Actor because the guy who won it played a historical character with a disease, and those always win. Which is true. And on top of that, I was rooting for Keaton! But it was still either a dick move, because, come on, just let it go, dude, or it was really stupid, because there's no way it doesn't look like sour grapes.

I think it's kind of silly to remove oneself from a catagory because the person you're running against has a different viewpoint, especially if bigoted... I mean, isn't the point of being in the catagory to run against the person in that catagory? What idiot would think that because you are nominated along with this other guy that means you hold this other guy's ideals?

(Godwin's Law imitate) That would be like saying Paul von Hindenburg is associated with Hitler because he ran against the guy in a ballet. Did he go "I want off this ballot if he's on it?". Heck no. He, in poor health and in his 80s (in the 1930s mind you) said "I have to stay on the ballot BECAUSE Hitler is on it, despite my wish to retire..."

In a way if your work promotes social tolerance and or justice and you leave because the one you're running against is promoting intolerance and or justice for only a privileged few, then your leaving does not prevent the later from winning, it promotes it to happen.

That's kind of oversimplifying the issue. Some of it is that the works in question got on the ballot as part of a slate, and many object to slates in principle as being against the spirit of the awards, and to these slates in particular because they were clearly created for the purpose of furthering political/ideological agenda in protest rather than recognizing quality work. (Which is what the puppy folks accuse the other side of doing with the Hugos.)

It's a mess, and a complicated one to try to explain succinctly, but in a nutshell, sf/f fandom now is aware that the Hugos can be gamed without technically breaking any rules. From the sound of some of the comments I'm seeing elsewhere, some furries are now realizing the same thing about the UMAs.

The UMAs were not gamed; this is one guy upset he lost to a non-furry comedy site making fun of furries (or probably just upset he lost, period). Said comedy site didn't game the system; they put up one video saying "vote for us!" (which also contained almost the exact quote "don't vote for us," by the way), which, if that's "gaming the system," Flayrah is just as much a "gamer of the system," and that didn't work out so well for us.

I think what they didn't want was to be included on a third-party slate of preferred authors to vote for, some of whom they disagreed with and didn't want to be associated with; but what you describe might have happened as well.